Your Right to Know

Not so long ago, a fierce election was waged in Ohio, with Democrats insisting that the incumbent had the economy going in the right direction and Republicans declaring the opposite.

Almost six months after President Barack Obama carried Ohio with a message of an improving economy, likely 2014 Democratic gubernatorial challenger Ed FitzGerald formally launched his campaign yesterday by stating that the state is headed in the wrong direction under Republican Gov. John Kasich’s leadership.

“Ohio has one chance to get this right, to really be competitive in a global economy in the 21st century,” FitzGerald told an audience of about 200 supporters yesterday in a Columbus State Community College ballroom. The Democrat held similar events at a Cleveland hotel and in a Cincinnati union hall.

“This governor is never going to be able to do it. Despite some bragging and some boasting by Gov. Kasich — we’re in the middle of what he calls an economic miracle — too many Ohioans are being left out.”

A former FBI agent and mayor of Lakewood, FitzGerald began a four-year term in 2011 as Cuyahoga County’s first elected executive. County voters had approved a new system of government after a widespread corruption scandal led to a number of top elected officials going to prison.

He is trying to do what 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney could not: convince Ohioans they need to change course. The one constant in this mix of campaign messages is Kasich, who was presiding over the state last year as Democrats praised Obama’s policies for Ohio’s recovery.

“John Kasich says things about the Ohio economy that Barack Obama never claimed about the national economy,” FitzGerald told reporters after his Columbus speech. “Barack Obama’s not called the national economy a miracle; he’s always said we have a lot of work to do, that we’ve lost some ground with working people and we’ve got to be sensitive to that. John Kasich has basically declared ‘mission accomplished.’ ”

At one point during his Columbus address, FitzGerald said “we cannot afford to wait” any longer for leadership — a phrase bearing strong similarities to one of the Romney campaign’s chief slogans.

Kasich does credit his own policies for Ohio’s trajectory. Since Kasich took office in January 2011, Ohio has gained 115,000 jobs and its unemployment rate has fallen from 9 percent to 7.1 percent.

“It's all a matter of how people feel — they feel their economic future is better,” Kasich said yesterday when asked about his re-election bid. “It’s up to them. I think right now they feel that way; we’ll just have to see. Got to keep going, though, because if they don’t think they’re going to get their money’s worth, they’ll look in another direction.”

According to one federal survey released last week, Ohio lost 20,400 jobs in March — worst in the U.S. Kasich cited the same survey from February that showed the state had added about 16,000 jobs that month and said Ohio was “clearly headed in the right direction.” FitzGerald said the bad March jobs report is “not a miracle, it’s not acceptable, and we can do a lot better.”

FitzGerald, 44, was joined by his wife and four teenage children for the Columbus and Cleveland announcements. In Cleveland, he was introduced by former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, an icon among Ohio’s African-American voters.

Fitzgerald made it clear yesterday that he also is ready to attack Kasich’s specific policies — he ripped the governor’s proposed sales-tax expansion, said Kasich “attacked working people” with Senate Bill 5 in 2011, and called JobsOhio a “walking disaster.”

Kasich, who said he has met but doesn’t really know FitzGerald, declined to engage yesterday. But the Republican mayors in FitzGerald’s Cuyahoga County chimed in, defending Kasich’s record and blasting FitzGerald for seeking the governorship after only two years as county executive.

“This isn’t (an) exhibition of strong leadership; it is just blind political ambition,” Bay Village Mayor Debbie Sutherland said of FitzGerald. “We all deserve better than that.”

FitzGerald also said, “I think the chances of there being a serious, competitive primary is diminishing daily” — referring to the prospects of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray entering the race.